Cuba's ailing Castro unlikely to resume power: US analysts

Cuba's ailing Castro unlikely to resume power: US analysts
by Patrick Moser 45 minutes ago

MIAMI (AFP) - Cuba's ailing communist leader
Fidel Castro is unlikely to reassume the presidency he temporarily ceded
to his brother Raul, according to US analysts.

"My opinion is he's never going to be able to resume his act," said
Brian Latell, a former intelligence officer at the
Central Intelligence Agency.

"He'll never be back in the saddle. His era is over."

Another prominent Cuba expert, Jaime Suchlicki expressed a similar view,
saying that "succession has taken place."

"Fidel Castro is not returning, and if he is returning, it will be in a
ceremonial cap," said Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies in Miami.

Cuban authorities insist Castro is recovering and would be back on the
job within weeks, or possibly months, though they remain tight-lipped
about his precise condition.

The communist leader, who turns 80 on Sunday, said in a July 31
statement he was recovering from surgery for intestinal bleeding and had
provisionally ceded the power he held for almost 48 years to his brother
and designated successor, who is also Cuba's defense minister.

Neither Castro brother has been seen in public since the July 31
announcement, and US
President George W. Bush said on Monday he too was in the dark about the
communist leader's condition.

The analysts, speaking Monday at a round-table in Miami, said the
question is now how long Raul Castro, 75, would be able to perform the
job he inherited.

"He drinks too much when he is under stress and he's now likely to drink
even more," said Latell, who wrote a book called "After Fidel: The
inside Story of Castro's regime and Cuba's next leader."

"We may see a succession that lasts a very short time," said Suchlicki,
adding: "We have to look at the post-Raul era."

He described Raul Castro as "a Stalinist," who is "as brutal or more
brutal than Fidel Castro."

"He is no reformist," said Suchlicki, stressing that Raul Castro was
unlikely to introduce any significant economic or political changes, at
least for the next year.

He also said the younger Castro would likely reject any possible
overtures by Washington. "He does not want a relation with the United
States."

But former US State Department official Susan Kaufman Purcell, who heads
the University of Miami's Center for Hemispheric Policy, said that once
Castro is gone, there will be growing pressure within the United States
to drop the more than four-decade-old US trade embargo on the Caribbean
island nation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060808/pl_afp/cubacastrous_060808145812